You say banāna, I say banána

I say abortion, you say infanticide — what’s the difference? At least that’s conservatives’ argument. Liberals say: that’s ridiculous. There is a clear and obvious difference between an abortion and an infanticide (although they are silent on the actual difference; maybe it’s a secret…).

Not for everyone, apparently. ← Warning! Some potentially disturbing stuff there.

Gun rights in Iowa

Go Idaho! I mean, Ohio. Or something…



Overall, I think I like this. Mostly because it makes liberals mad, and it’s fun to watch (or read) them get all pissed off about it.

On the other hand, that guy does have a point — what the hell is up with raised whachamacallit (my dictionary says “nab” — but I am not sure…) at 0:44? I also agree that this was a bit silly — who cares about your exercise of your right to carry a gun in a zoo? But whatever — as a Russian saying goes, “Whatever the baby plays with, as long as it doesn’t cry” (OK, it sounds better in Russian). Let the goyim chak in chainik. (I loved the “until they are old enough to carry a gun, their children carry a knife”. As TRS says, more kavana for “she lo asani goy”.)

I wonder if opening a gun store in CH would be a good business venture.

* * *

Sorry, but I have to say this: boo at Wisconsin. Or at least the idiots in charge of it.

Putting the puzzle together

There is a saying in Yiddish, “Az tzvei menchen zugen dir du bist a shiker, gei shlofen” (“If two people tell you that you’re drunk, go to sleep”). I can’t possibly give over every single vort I heard tonight at once — I’ll have to do it in installments (plus, I’ll post the recording of it after I delete the pauses, niggunim, things that shouldn’t be public, etc.). I will, however, give over the one I was quite impressed with (also, it was at the beginning, so I can find it easily on my recording).

When you put together a puzzle, what do you do? First, you put together the edges, which is not hard, because they are straight and clear. After you’re done with the edges, what do you do? You put the middle together, obviously. But how do you do this?

Answer: you look at the puzzle’s box cover which has the picture (and put the puzzle together according to the picture).

In our lives — the lives of Jews — the edges are very clear. Hashem wants us to keep Halacha, so we keep Halacha. Shulchan Aruch says X, we do X. Shulchan Aruch says “not Y”, so we don’t do Y. Hashem wants us to daven, so we daven. Nu?.. That’s the simple part. I mean, sure, it’s difficult, but at least it’s straightforward. If you’re an appikoires, that’s another story — but as a frum Yid, surely you know what to do, and it’s clear.

But that’s only the edges of the puzzle. The middle of the puzzle is empty and broken. How do we make sure that our puzzle has the essence, the filling, and that it is not broken in hundred pieces, but that it’s one piece — that our keeping of Halacha, our davening, our learning, our Yiddishkeit, our community (az och un vei) are not empty, meaningless, for the sake of themselves, without essence or purpose — and, most importantly, are one single nekuda, one single entity unified with Hashem? How do we fill the middle of the puzzle?

We look at the cover of the box — we look at what the Rebbe tells us and teaches us the filling, the “middle” should be.

But why should we care what the cover of the box looks like? What does it have to do with the actual puzzle? The answer is that obviously, whoever drew the cover of the box saw the puzzle in its complete form — and copied it onto the box.

The Rebbe saw the puzzle, with edges and with the middle, one single piece, with essence, complete and unified. He saw the world in its perfect, final state, with every piece of it, from the mundane physical aspects, to deep spiritual ideas, to meat and potatoes of Judaism (the commandments, the law, the rituals, the learning, the customs, the community) — all of this one with Hashem. He didn’t only see it in the future, He saw it in the present. He lived in it.

And he painted the picture of what it looks for us, so that we can put together the puzzle — of our lives and of this world.

Except, the Rebbe did more. Our Rebbe, the final, the seventh, the current, born in 1902, did more. As somebody said on a Living Torah video, Frierdiker Rebbe knew how the World to Come looks like. The Rebbe knew how to get there. And he showed us. He told us. He taught us — not in a way of metaphors, parables, hints, play of shadows and light. In a clear and obvious way.

Du dorf lernen Chassidus Chabad. You have to learn Chabad Chassidus to bring Mashiach. As my rabbi says, you have to learn the Rebbe’s sichos (and ma’amorim obviously). It is exciting time to be a chossid of the Rebbe. It is important and responsible time. Stop chaking chainik. Go and bring Mashiach.

Medicine under socialism

If you listen to liberals, under capitalism, evil and greedy hospital owners will be free to throw poor people out on the street to die. Reduced costs of medicine due to capital investments and deregulation will never happen, of course. Nor will anybody ever help out poor people to get health care — unless the government robs him.

Under socialism, of course, this could never happen. Every poor person is taken care of.

Seeing G-d in the world

Recently, I visited MIT museum of science. I used to think that it’s very difficult to see Hashem in the science. But I may be changing my opinion. Just like when you cook something in a pan in which another dish has been cooked, and the second dish absorbs the taste of the first, when you look at the world, having learned Chassidus (which explains that — and how — there is nothing but G-d), you can see Hashem in the Universe.

I think.

A few moments in the life of a cell (turning on sound helps — but beware…).

Face to face with Emes

I heard a story from a local shliach. I missed the beginning (or said lechaim and got distracted), but the nekuda was that before the Rebbe would leave his room to come down for davening, the door would be half-open, and rabbi Groner would manipulate the door in such a way that nobody could see the Rebbe before he was ready to come out.

The shliach (as a young bochur) and his father were standing outside the door and waiting for the Rebbe (again, I don’t remember the details). Suddenly, rabbi Groner accidentally let the door go or something, and it swung open. They saw the Rebbe standing without his hat, without kapotta, with his color up, putting on a tie. The shliach’s father’s face became completely white. The shliach himself, he says, felt completely terrified. The Rebbe looked at them for a couple seconds, and then a big smile came to his face.

At that point, Rabbi Groner swung the door back closed. In a few minutes, the Rebbe walked out with two siddurim — one for himself, and the other for the bochur (the shliach). He looked at the father and said: “What you saw was no big deal.” Then he turned to the bochur and said: “Un du — du dorf lernen Chassidus” (“And you — you have to learn Chassidus”).

The point is: the Rebbe was confident in the shliach’s father. When you’re an emesdike person, if you meet with Emes, you can handle it. And you — who doesn’t yet know how to deal with the truth — you need to learn Chassidus.

Chess

(how computer sees a chess game)

I hope y’all are having a nice Yud Shvat.

Very nice (visually) computer chess player. (As far as skill, it’s not too great — I won without too much effort, and I am nowhere near a decent player; plus, I haven’t played chess for a long time, having switched from it to the greatest board game ever invented.)

This web-site illustrates very nicely the idea of framework of nodes and choices (all roads lead to Rome; all choices lead to Mashiach) and also why Go is so much cooler than chess.

Rabbi Shlomo Yaffe uses the moshol of chess to explain the hashgacha protis – bechira dichotomy.

The Rebbe’s first Bosi LeGani

Here you can hear a recording of the first Bosi LeGani delivered by the Rebbe as a sign of his accepting the nesius.

Listen to Rabbi Paltiel’s shiur (near the end, starting from ~1:04:20) for some details about the farbrengen.

See also these shiurim of this year’s Bosi LeGani: part 1 and part 2.

Between the Yud Shvats

Frierdiker Rebbe was both an idealist and an extremely practical man. [...] And these characteristics made him a Rebbe — not a tzaddik, not a businessman, but a Rebbe.

An extremely amazing shiur (or a farbrengen) on the year between the two Yud Shvats — that of Frierdiker Rebbe and the first Yud Shvat of the Rebbe. It starts with the Frierdiker Rebbe’s illness, goes on to talk about the year before our Rebbe became the Rebbe and culminates with the first farbrengen of our generation and the first ma’amor that the Rebbe delivered. I think the first years and the general overview of the nessius are also included at the end.

This shiur is amazing because of the details of the ongoing events and the little side-stories, which are always characteristic of Rabbi Paltiel’s shiurim.

A thought on Arabs

(German prisoners of war in Moscow)

WWII and post-WWII history teaches us a very important lesson applicable to the war with Arabs.

If we are to defeat the Muslim civilization in this war, like we defeated Germans and Japanese, there is only one way to do it.

Break them. Defeat them militarily, dominate and publicly humiliate (primarily in their own eyes) their culture, and turn them into soft-spoken, leather-wearing hippies. There is no other solution.

German and Japanese nations suffered a number of military and cultural defeats throughout history, yet they remained the same. They retained the same ambitions and goals and behaved the same way during subsequent wars. Until they were defeated, occupied, nullified and transformed.

One cannot domesticate a wolf. It needs to be turned into a dog.

* * *

Update: As this post notes, Israel has already achieved pretty good results with Egypt and Jordan. OK, not complete transformation like in Japan and Germany, but something one can live with…

Internet — the good old days

From the last century:



See also this.

On trips, subways and converts

This was an amazing Shabbos for me. Besides the usual amazing stuff (davening, sichos, Bosi LeGani, Bava Metzia, a pillow fight), I met some interesting and amazing people.

For starters, I met a frum guy from Brooklyn who travelled with a Bobover chossid through Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq “under-cover” (pretending to be Canadian). Without knowledge of Arabic (the guys says, “Never let language be a barrier for travelling”). Sometimes going through anti-Israeli rallies. Not seeing a single American throughout the whole trip, let alone a Jew. Besides almost getting themselves arrested in Syria and then being interrogated for an hour or so by Israeli police (they went to Sderot after all this), the guy told me the trip was very pleasant. He never felt threatened (obviously, he didn’t reveal his identity) and saw some nice things.

Not an advice. Just very interesting dude. By the way, the Bobover chossid apparently knew nothing about the Middle East.

The second interesting guy was a lawyer from Byelorus who knew every single detail about every single subway in the world. This is not something I can relay through a blog — you had to be there.

But the guy meeting whom was beyond interesting or amazing was Yakov Ephraim Parisi — a former Evangelical Pastor who was born a Catholic and ended up a convert to Judaism and a Lubavitch Chossid after going through a hell of twenty years in his journey towards Yiddishkeit. I will write more about him tomorrow, after I get more sleep, but for now you can listen to the interview in the link above. I just want to say that all of us listening to his story were absolutely blown away by the Pintele Yid.

It wasn’t just a simple story of “Priest starts looking into roots of ‘Old Testament’ and ends up converting to Judaism” (which in itself would be pretty remarkable). The absolute emunah pshutah and self-sacrifice he and his wife went through on their way to Judaism are remarkable.

Plus, some nice stories — e.g., about carrying a cross out of a church or learning Torah Ohr with misnagdim. This was nuts even by my rabbi’s standards. Stay tuned…

A storyteller

An approach from the philosophic point of view.

A father told his daughter that she needs to go to bed on time, otherwise he won’t tell her a bedtime story. When the daughter went to bed on time, she’d hear a story. When she misbehaved and didn’t go on time, she didn’t hear a story.

One time the daughter woke up in the middle of night and left her room. She saw the father sitting in his room, working on computer.

“Daddy,” she screamed, “go to sleep! Otherwise, you will forget all the stories!”

* * *

Sometimes we forget that just because G-d doesn’t follow the rules He set up, it doesn’t make Him not Right or not Good. After all, He is the source of good. When we say “G-d is good”, we don’t [only] mean that G-d does good. We mean that G-d is Good. Or, more accurately, that Good is G-d.

We don’t need the State to direct progress

Even Einstein agrees:

The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality...

Which agrees with what I said earlier:

The idea that governments must be actively involved in the free life of citizens is extremely pervasive. Most people believe that without the government manipulating something all the time, there would be no progress of civilization. When something goes wrong, people ask, “Why doesn’t the government do something?” The government officials themselves see a need to be constantly regulating and monitoring something — otherwise, people who have elected them will think they are slacking off. It reminds me of Seinfeld’s George Costanza who needed to look annoyed, concerned and busy all the time to make his boss think he is doing something.

Indeed, the word itself, “government”, suggests that its role is to constantly “govern”, direct progress. Yet, an intelligent and educated student of history immediately recognizes that the majority of developments leading to progress and improvement in standard of living were done through private efforts of free enterprise (≡ striving for success) and personal innovation, not through some wise Central Committee’s “governing”.

Speaking of Oral Torah

A conversation with one X-ian:

— In Isaiah 53:2, there is no “Israel” inserted in brackets. It’s just something “Talmudists” made up to get out of the prophecy about [idolatry].
— And in expression F = ma, there is no multiplication sign. It’s just something some physicists made up.

Nor, by the way, is there in V = IR. It’s just something I made up to prove a point.

Speaking of Catholics

When printing press came out, Catholics called it the Devil’s machine and a danger to civilization. No concept of making a vessel for G-dliness.

Lehavdil, Jews started printing Shulchan Aruch, Tanach and Talmud.


Watch Printing 1947 in How to Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Penguins seen in Florida!

(Global warming has reached Washington, D.C.)

Well, not quite, but close.

How will we survive?

Some news are serious, some news are disturbing, some news are terrifying and bringing tears to eyes.

But after reading certain news, one starts thinking — how will the planet turn now? What will hold the Universe together?

A couple examples: one and two.

Despite the President’s sincerest assurances...

… not everyone is brain-dead. Some still have some seichel attached to their middois (full version).

(It would look even nicer if there wasn’t a period at the end of that sentence.)

A dialogue between а liberal and a conservative about money

Every conversation is different, but its essence is azoy:

— What’s wrong with stealing money?
— It’s my money. It belongs to me, and you’re stealing it. You have no right to have something I have a right to.
(a couple minutes of thinking…)
— OK, I concede. You are absolutely right in the particular point that you raised. That is why I believe there needs to be a balance between your point of view and my point of view.
— ???